Sustain/Swells/Echoey spaciness, (i.e. trey, tim)

[trippin6strings]

the key to trey's feedback is the fact that his guitar is always causing feedback. if he didnt mute every other string when he was playing you would be blown away by his sustain. his compressor does help with keeping it from going too high or dying out but its mostly his guitar.

you could sell ur car or house and get a languadoc, or you could try picking up a hollowbody guitar (yes his guitar is a hollowbody) and removing the middle pickup (his guitar has a plastic mold filling the space where the single middle pickup would be), this also helps with songs like maze where trey pushes against his guitars body while soloing to get the right amount of sustain (like i said, a lot has to do with the guitar itself).

this plus his ibanez tube screamers are cranked (one always on 10 for songs like chalk dust and tweezer), his other stays between 3 and 5.

i think the most important thing in working at this sound is realizing its a natural sound from his rig, its not something he manufactures...

the only volume pedal im aware of on trey's rig would be his ernie ball acoustic volume pedal for his martin. he does have a boomerang phase sampler but he rarley used that with phish.

one thing i do to have fun with feedback is keep the tone on my pichups down a lil right where i want them and keep the volume knobs down a little so that when im jamming and move from a leading tone up to a high point i can turn my volume on my guitar all the way up and hold that climactic note. as i hold the note and turn the knob the sound is gonna be sustained but with the extra boost from the guitar the feedback soars and my compressor holds it and lets it form kinda like a wave building up until the ascending movement down. i hope that makes some sense, just something i have fun with. also a tube amp will help and if youve got a wah pedal that will add another dimension to directiong your feedback (toe up or toe down). sorry for rambling, hope some of this helps, peace...

[gumbomadness]

thank you very very much!
can you tell me what a volume pedal does exactly? Ive researched, but i still dont completley understand its capabilities.

[i like tictacs]

turns the volume up or down depending if you depress the pedal. useful for when you need to be loud for solos but the same level for just regular songs as the rest of the band.

[gumbomadness]

turns the volume up or down depending if you depress the pedal. useful for when you need to be loud for solos but the same level for just regular songs as the rest of the band.

so if i press slowly, this will give me a swelling sound?

[Devils08]

Just a warning, this will be kinda long:

As mentioned, simply, the volume pedal adjusts the volume of the signal depending on how far you press the pedal down with your toe (you kinda rock from your heel down/toe up to toe down to go from full mute to full volume). For swells and volume effects, the way the volume pedal works is that if you press the toe down in conjunction with your pick attack, the attack is muted and then the rest of hte tone gradually fades in. THe key is to get the timing right to get the proper muting of the attack and proper gradual increase in the volume of hte note. It takes some serious practice. As far as I know, none of the Boss delay pedals will give you this swell effect. The DL4 does actually have an auto-volume swell setting (you play the note and it takes care of the volume adjustments itself - it adapts to how hard of an attack you apply to the strings as well) that is alright but of course, as most "auto" things are, to get the real full effect, it's better to have the manual controls at your disposal (ie: volume pedal or volume knob on an electric).

Tim uses the Boss pedal to delay/repeat the swelling effect that you can very easily hear on almost any of his D&T songs and some DMB stuff. I think its important to clear up the distinction between the swell effect caused by a change in volume and a delay/infinite loop effect caused by simply repeating a note or a short passage. Delay is simply hte repeating effect that you hear Tim and thousands of other guitarists use. Both Tim and Trey also use looping (see Tim's solo stuff and Trey's First Tube, respectively). Looping is basically a longer delay effect that is repeated infinitely. Trey uses a similar product to the DL4 called a boomerang. Tim uses the Boss which has only about 5 seconds of delay time, or so, depending on the model you get. The DL4 is a more capable looper as it has a dedicated looping feature. Tim uses the Boss to loop but if you hear him (mostly on his solo stuff), they're only short little phrases repeated infinitely. The Dl4 has between 14 and 28 seconds of delay time so you can loop whole chord progressions, overdubs, baselines and drum beats (a la Keller Williams, Howie Day, etc.)

That being said, by simply purchasing either of the 3 of these pedals (a boss, a dl4 or a vol pedal), you will not automatically sound like Tim - it takes practice with timing and patience but the effect is an incredibly powerful one at that. I hope that helps clear up some confusion and doesn't add too much more - I'll be happy to help you out with this as I've travelled down this path not too long ago in search for those incredibly cool tones created by both Tim and Trey. But also, I can't emphasize enough, go to a guitar store and put in some serious time on whatever pedal you chose, be it a DL4, Boss b/c to each his own and many will fight to the death supporting their personal choice of delay pedal. Let me know if you have any questions - jordan@northwestern.edu - I'm sometimes slow to respond to stuff on here, thats the best way to reach me.

[gumbomadness]

well, i might be in the school jazz band, which is basically a big band setting,
so it seems for raising my volume for solos and just adjusting my volume without having to go to the amp, (or what my guitar knob cant do), it seems that the volume pedal would be ideal, right?
One thing, on my electric, using a the volume knob is pretty awkward when trying to swell--...the volume pedal would seem easier. Im gonna try everything out at a store this weekend i believe.

For personal use, (not at school) i might get a looper for my own shits and giggles, to be able to loop and stand alone and be full.

I'll put more here on my decisions and how they work out...